


Parade Rest

by Cluegirl



Series: Scatterlings and Orphans [8]
Category: Avengers 2012
Genre: F/M, M/M, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-16
Updated: 2013-01-16
Packaged: 2017-11-25 18:29:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/641741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cluegirl/pseuds/Cluegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sooner or later, no matter how many comforting promises are offered, the reckoning must come, the music must be faced, and the piper -- or in Steve's case, the Pepper -- must be paid her due.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parade Rest

"Christ, Steve, will you just relax?" Tony griped on this sixth circuit of the waiting lounge. "It's just Pepper, not the Red Skull. Nothing to be afraid of."

Steve gave him a sidelong glare, then went back to watching the planes through the window. "You're the one pacing, Tony," he said, mild as he could on his fraying patience. He chose, yet again, not to bring up the fact that missing his morning run made him antsy on the best of days, and missing breakfast on top of that was just adding to the insult. Or to observe that the airport had more obstructive security than it used to take to get into a top secret RSS facility, and yet it didn't seem to do anything but slow folks down and annoy them. Or to suggest that if Tony didn't sit down and shut up soon, Steve might just be forced to fold the man into a knot and sit on him until the jet arrived.

"I'm the one bored, Steve," Tony answered, flapping his hand at the accusation. "The Wifi here is for shit, and it's unsecured, and I wouldn't even _be_ stuck in the waiting area at all, only Pepper made me promise I'd stop sneaking past Security to meet her plane – which is actually my plane, -- on the runway, but that is all irrelevant to the fact that you've been standing there at parade rest for the last five minutes." 

Annoyed to realize he was right, Steve sighed and dropped his hands to his sides. Tony, of course, took the tacit admission and ran away with it, grinning like a dog all the way. "Nope, you're still raising the blood pressure of this whole terminal just through proximity alone," he declared, leaning into Steve's side in what was probably supposed to look like a friendly shoulder-nudge, but which felt a lot more like something between a public declaration, and an indecency infraction from where Steve was standing. "You shoulda let me blow you in the car, man."

Steve managed not to flinch, mainly through stubbornness alone. "You kiss your girlfriend with that mouth?" he asked to distract himself from the traitorous voice in his head that was whispering that he should have accepted Tony's offer, and he'd be a lot less tense right now if he had

"Kiss and then some," Tony grinned, dog becoming wolf in a flash of unrepentant teeth. Then, when Steve rolled his eyes, he let go a laugh that echoed from the nearly empty lounge, and drew the eyes of the security agents who'd been trying not to seem like they'd been watching for the last ten minutes since Steve and Tony had arrived. "Seriously, Cap," Tony added, as if he didn't notice the scrutiny, "it's fine. You know it's fine, right?"

And it was that look, Steve realized, that one right there that got him; wary hopefulness peeking out from behind the grinning playboy's mask, the bright, half-terrified delight of someone who couldn't quite figure out where his good fortune had come from. It was so incongruous to Tony's image -- the man who could buy or build anything he wanted, so never had to ask if he could have it, or how much it cost – that it cut right through the staticky anxious loop of _'what the hell am I doing here?'_ that had been playing in Steve's own mind from about sixteen seconds after he'd found himself in the back of a limo, headed to the private terminal of LaGuardia, to pick up his lover's girlfriend from her Thanksgiving trip with family.

' _Jesus, Rogers. What the hell are you doing here?'_

Steve blew out his breath and found about half a smile to tack onto his nod. "So you've said," he answered, shoulder-nudging Tony in return, and not adding ' _I'm trusting you here,'_ onto the end of the sentence. They both knew that part. It's what had got them here, together in a way that Steve couldn't have imagined a year ago, and couldn't have accepted a month ago. He still wasn't entirely sure how it all was supposed to work. Tony was terrible at explaining it, and had stopped trying once his second effort at it had nearly descended into them shouting at each other. The sex that followed had nicely diffused the tension between them, but with so many of his questions unanswered, Steve still couldn't quite shrug off the notion that Pepper was going to march straight up and slap his face the instant she saw it.

Tony's mouth twisted down, as though he'd read the drift of Steve's thoughts in his gaze, but before he could speak, the phone in his suit jacket began to sing throatily about how it loved Rock and Roll, and wanted more money for the juke box. Tony was on it quicker than a cat, bouncing on his toes like a kid at Christmas. "Pepper!" he cried then winced a glare as Steve scruffed him to stop him setting off pacing again. "Darling, sweetheart, light of my life, where the fuck are you?" 

"Behind you," came the answer, punctuated with heel clicks from both the phone, and from the long hallway behind the lounge. 

Steve whipped around before he'd even thought to do so, just managing to let go of Tony's coat first. He spotted the redhead in her blue jeans and black boots at once, and oh, Steve had never been gladder that Pepper was tall, light of hair and eye, and didn't seem to favor bright red lipstick, because it was starting to seem impossible that sleeping with a lady's fella wasn't far more worthy of getting punched in the mouth than sassing a lady, even an officer, over her accent. Steve swallowed hard, seeing yet again in his in his mind's eye, just how quick Hodges, for all his brawn and muscle, had gone over under Peggy Carter's well motivated right cross.

But Pepper was all tired smile spiced with only mild irritation, and even that faded into a fond, indulgent smile as Tony bounded past Steve to greet her, not with the expected hug, but by plucking her overnight case out of her hands and slinging it onto his own shoulder. The gesture, casual as it was, still managed to be somehow intimate, and Steve fought down his guilty flush, and the feeling of being a voyeur to the adoring look they shared then. He pulled himself up right, fixed his stare resolutely on the still-lingering security agents in the facing lounge, and decided that if Pepper did decide to sock him one in the mouth, he'd stand still and take it. Least he could do, all things considered.

"They changed our runway and arrival gate on approach," Pepper said, catching Tony in a brief, sidelong hug, her lips snagging on the angle of his beard before he made a show of ducking away. "But I'm guessing you got distracted and missed the announcement, didn't you?"

"Well can you blame me?" Tony answered, totally unaware of how that casual handwave in his direction made Steve's battle-hardened nerves go jittery, and iron stomach turn over in a sudden flop. Steve felt his face flame under a sudden, damning blush, but he fiercely restrained the urge to babble that they hadn't, that he wouldn't have, that it was a completely innocent distraction, and he'd never _dream_ of letting Tony meet his girl after a week away with the smell of Steve's spunk on his breath.

' _Breathe, Punk,_ ' Steve told himself fiercely and silently, and not sounding a bit like Bucky in the safety of his own head. ' _You sold war bonds in blue tights; you can damn well do this!_ ' Then he took a breath and tried to figure out which one of his practiced smiles would pass best for genuine. He figured his odds were good – Tony was babbling a mile a minute, all sound and motion and delighted energy, obviously thrilled to have Pepper back in reach again, and who'd be able to tear away from that to wonder about the awkward hanger-on in the shadows? 

"And you're _doing it_ again, Steve!" Tony finished, whirling on his heel and leveling a finger.

Steve blinked, and settled on the 'clueless and confused' smile. Tony's narrow glare hinted that he wasn't buying. "At _ease_ , soldier! You're not being court martialed here!"

Oh. Parade rest again. Steve flexed his hands, one clasped inside the other in the small of his back, but before he could move, Pepper gave Tony a light thwack with her knuckles and tsked. "Leave the poor man alone, Tony. He's just fine as he is." 

For a moment, Steve was almost grateful. He didn't expect Tony to understand it, but falling back on his military training _was_ comforting when Steve didn't know what to do with himself. He might not know how Steve Rogers should act, but he knew how a soldier should, and so that's what he did in front of reporters, at charity galas, and even sometimes when Fury put him on edge in debriefings. 

But then Pepper stepped – no, _stalked_ around Tony, eyes locked on Steve's face, her smile deepening with an edge that made Steve remember every time he'd eaten a mouthful of size ten in the face of a confident, pretty girl. It wasn't quite cruel, that smile, but there was definitely something in it that was ready to be amused. Steve's belly sank like a rock, but he held his place as she came on, kept his face neutral as she clacked to a stop just inches from his chest. _'I am trusting Tony,'_ he reminded himself firmly, and did not let himself flinch from her regard.

"Captain Rogers?" she asked after a moment, a drill sergeant lurking under her polite tones.

He kept his eyes fixed on the wall over her head, and fiercely ignored Tony's scoff when he said, "Yes ma'am?" with all the courtesy the nuns had drilled into his childhood.

"Did you touch my stuff?"

His mouth twitched, surprise or maybe chagrin, but Steve pulled it straight again. In for a penny... "Yes ma'am," he answered.

"Mm hmm," she said, then began to circle him clockwise, boot heels managing to tick even in the thin industrial carpet. "And did you enjoy it?"

She was behind him now, so Steve didn't bother quelling the smile, or the hopeful belief that this might actually _not_ end with him getting socked in the mouth. "Yes ma'am, I did," He said, cutting a glance Tony's way. The man was staring at them, mouth open and eyes glassy behind his blue-tinted sunglasses. There was even a light staining of pink across his cheeks, and it warmed the last of the chill right out of Steve's belly as Pepper finished her circuit took up a stern stance in front of him.

"And did you put it back where you got it when you were done?" She asked him, fists on her hips like a schoolteacher.

"I'm afraid I didn't yet, ma'am," Steve admitted with a grin. "I meant to this morning, but Tony kind of shanghaied me on the way back to the Tower. He said something about stopping for brunch, and then before I knew it we were at the airport, waiting around to pick up some redhead he fancied."

Now it was Pepper's turn to quell a grin, and Steve felt a surge of triumph that she didn't quite manage it. "Yes, well," she said, slipping her arm through the crook of his elbow and neatly pulling his arm around to the front. "That happens a lot with Tony. I'd say you'll get used to it, but it's probably best you don't try. He'll only escalate."

That, at last, knocked Tony out of his daze. "Bup, bup, bup! No colluding!" he cried, descending on them in a flapping of hands and prying their elbows apart to insinuate himself between. "I will not be colluded against!"

"Oh, what did that poor participle ever do to you?" Pepper murmured, which made Steve laugh again. 

"Woman, don't make me cook you an omelet," Tony warned, and Pepper's smile spread into dazzling white.

"You're cooking? Wonderful! I'll phone the Board of Directors right away and invite them. I'm sure at least half of them would love to join us," she said, and spurred them all into motion with a single, decisive stride. "I'm sure Phil can meet us for drinks afterward if I promise to send him the security footage of Kate Beldam chasing you around the kitchen island with her latest list of demands. She's wanted a meeting with you for months now..."

Steve matched her pace, ignoring Tony's spluttering protests and lifting him along by the arm. "Much fun as that sounds, maybe we'd better just stick with the four of us this time," he suggested, beginning to believe, at last, that it really _might_ be actually all right. "I have some questions for you and Agent Coulson that I don't think the Stark Industries Board of Directors really needs to hear..."

**Author's Note:**

> Several people requested this vignette, including my Muse, who basically trumps all, and is not afraid to abuse her power. I hope this pleases those who wanted to be a fly on the wall when Steve had to talk to Pepper about what happened.


End file.
